Deader'n' Vaudeville

It's really too bad that film photography is dead, because I'm really enjoying the bargains to be had in used (film) cameras.


A couple of years ago, I was in a local GoodWill, and they were just putting out a Vivitar 90mm/2.5 macro lens. Beautiful lens, very well regarded when it came out in 1978. I picked it up, looked at it - but I didn't have a Pentax "K"-mount camera, so ten bucks seemed like too much.

I left the store and was a mile away when it finally occurred to me that I COULD BUY A PENTAX CAMERA BODY. There must be literally a million K1000s around. So I turned around, went back and bought the macro lens. And as I was buying it, they were just putting out the K1000 that it had come in with. A K1000 and its SMC 50/2 for all of twenty bucks; plus 10 bucks for the Vivitar macro lens: $30 plus sales tax.

I've hacked around with it a bit - the K1000 is a crude but useful tool. The 90/2.5 lives up to its reputation.

Recently I saw this same lens go by on eBay: Vivitar 90mm/f2.5 Macro - where it sold for $400 plus $13.50 shipping.


In a related story, last fall I picked up a late Alpa SLR, one mass-produced by Chinon once Alpa could no longer afford to hand-make their cameras in Switzerland. I played with it a bit, but, once my curiosity was satisfied, I turned around and sold it on eBay. (I wasn't planning to invest in a bag full of M42 lenses just to use the thing.) What I learned, though, is that it really was beautifully made, which gave me some respect for Chinon's capabilities.

Last week I spotted a Chinon CP9-AF SLR on GoodWill.com. It was in a kit consisting of the AF SLR, its standard 28-70 AF zoom, a 70-210 AF zoom, a dedicated flash, a neveready case, the instruction book, a polarizing filter, etc. I was about to pass it by when I remembered that Chinons were K-mount bodies. So I bid, and got the whole kit for $31 plus shipping.

It's pretty much awesome. It has a built-in intervalometer. And, with non-AF K-mount lenses, it works in "Auto" mode as an aperture-preferred autoexposure camera. So I can use my two existing K-mount lenses with it, for a pretty powerful kit. It's got speed, it's got close-focusing, it's got a wide range of focal lengths - all it lacks is something wider than 28mm or longer than 210mm. I'm trying to think of a project that requires my K-mount macro lens and my new intervalometer-equipped camera: maybe a time-lapse sequence of seed germination?

Now, at some level, this seventy bucks or so would probably have been better spent toward a DSLR. But then again, this kit is quite a bit of fun, and by the time I'm done playing with it, the price of a DSLR will come down in price by that much, so I won't really be out much of anything at all.

Yes, I know film photography is dead - my kids certainly don't hesitate to remind me - but I'm having a ball collecting film cameras.

OK - I admit I need help

They say that's the first step.


I swore that I would buy No More Cameras until I buy myself a digital SLR.

But I'm still waiting for a Nikon DSLR that's both

a) affordable
and

b) compatible with my pallet of AI-S lenses.

So I've stopped going to the local Camera show, I no longer surf eBay for cameras (...well, except for the Zeiss Contessa of my dreams...).

But Friday, I stopped at the local GoodWill.

They had a Vivitar Series One lens, the famous 90mm/f2.5 Macro.
Interesting lens, but - mercifully - it was in Pentax K-mount.

So i walked away, and I was already a mile a way when it dawned on me that I could pick up a K1000 body to go with it, for about nothing. And have a low-cost knocking-around macro/portrait lens. A camera I could leave in the car, or loan to one of my kids without fear.

So I went back for the lens - and by the time I went back, the GoodWill had put out a K1000 with a working meter. (With its default 50mm/2.)

I guess it was meant to be - but, seriously now: what do I do with yet another film camera?


(PS - the camera came with an exposed roll of K64-36 in it. Have I also purchased the obligation to see that this Found Film gets developed?)

(PPS - the K1000 lacks a self-timer. So one immediate benefit is that I got to rummage around in my gadget drawer and put to use an external self-timer that my father left me. That was oddly satisfying, to have that relatively obscure bit of kit on hand.)

Stirrings from Rochester

("It's alive!")

Oct. 10, 2007: Kodak has tweaked TMAX 400:

We’ve improved both the grain and sharpness of KODAK PROFESSIONAL T-MAX 400 Film / 400TMY. Now, in addition to being the world’s finest-grained 400-speed B&W film, T-MAX 400 is also the world’s sharpest.


(Is this an admission on Kodak's part that Fuji's Neopan 400 was actually sharper?)

Supposedly in stores in December.


.

Forward, into the past

Here I am, surfing the internet, conducting conversations with people I've never met in real life...
...and over on the couch, the Lady Margaret is using her Stereopticon to view various Uplifting and Ennobling Views of the Great War.

(She was thinking about buying some more stereo views on eBay, and thought she should review the ones she owned.)

Today's Story from the A-V Department

Ok, I've been shooting slides for 30 years or so;
by now, I must have close to 10^4 mounted,
with another couple thousand transparencies
that I might yet mount.
(boop)

Kodak stopped production of slide projectors about two years ago.
I've heard that this year they very abruptly stopped support, too.
(boop)

Which makes me a little anxious about being so
deeply committed to what's now essentially a dead medium.
(boop)

So - in addition to stockpiling bulbs and trays for my Carousel projector -
(boop)

I just bought a Bell & Howell "Ringmaster" from OGS surplus, as a backup.
Ten bucks. (It works, too.)
(boop)

Getting it home, I discovered that it's not just one of the models
with sound - - it's actually one of the _recording_ models
(a "779B", from about 1977).
(boop)

Here's a recognition silhouette :
http://www.uaf.edu/library/media/equipment/video/ringmaster.htm
Note the slot for a cassette.
(boop)

Which means that I now have the capability
to record my own synchronized narration onto cassette.
(boop)

I'll have to poke around and figure out how the sync tone works.
(boop)

Can't Stop the Tide From Flowin'

I’ve been fighting an increasingly lonely rear-guard action against digital photography for about a decade now. Until the last few years, there has not been much wrong with a strategy of Waiting Until the Bugs Are Out Of It: each successive year has seen better resolutions, shorter lag times, AND lower prices. By now, even I can’t argue that digital photography hasn’t Arrived. Still -- having never even bothered to make the jump to autofocus -- I’ve had little motivation to jump in at the deep end of digital photography. (Quite the reverse, in fact: as everybody dumps their film cameras on eBay, film gear has never been cheaper.)

This weekend, The Teenager discovered the little Olympus digicam that I picked up on a clearance table last summer. And I think I’ve lost her to The Dark Side.

Last summer, I had given her a little Nikon EM to get her started with Serious Photography. (This is just about how I started, thirty years ago: when somebody gives you an SLR, you’ve been placed under a geas to at least learn how to use it.) I can’t exactly say that she has caught fire with the hobby. But this weekend she decided to help her mom start selling stuff on eBay - which pretty much necessitates putting up digital photos.

So, all on her own, she got the little Oly out, installed it on the kids’ iBook, and started snapping away with it. Pouring photos into iPhoto followed immediately.

Now what am I going to do with all this film?

Shirley, light of my life

Back in the late Pleistocene, when photography still involved silver and gelatin, Kodak used to publish a Color Darkroom Photoguide. And bound into each and every copy of this book was an original negative (with a matching print) of a pleasant-looking young woman traditionally referred to as "Shirley". As Kodak brought out new materials, each edition got a different 'Shirley', although Kodak worked hard at giving them a uniform 'look'. With a proper neg/print sample in your hand, and a sample 'ring-around' printed in the book, you got a running start at making your own prints with a tolerable color balance.

But Shirley's existence meant that somewhere in Rochester, there's a no-longer-young woman - several women, in fact - who, decades ago, earned a few bucks by posing as "Shirley" for hours while one of Kodak's house photographers blew off a few thousand original negatives of her. (If you look closely, you can see that her pupils are quite contracted - they're using a lot of light on her.)

I wonder where she is today.

I wonder if they have an alumni association, and reunions?